B42 initial and extended experience.

[DragonKing]

First off, I love this game, the attention to detail in how you can interact with the world is only getting better, and is a massive plus, so this is just me sharing my experience, because I want the game to be better.

Played for ~60 minutes of the the unstable build, and there is already a lot that I like, but also some pretty impactful things I don't, and shooting/aiming is still not believable to me. Melee combat also feels worse? And a few other notes I wanted to share about my experience.

First of, aiming. Even with 9 mags full of 9mm bullets, when you can't even hit a zombie at point blank range, how does that "feel good" or even "useful"? - It still just makes me feel like handguns are a trap, until you can get a massive xp boost from shotguns to make aiming not useless. The trade-off of making noise, versus taking out zombies without straining yourself is just not there still it seems? I like the reticle, but from my initial impression, the feedback from my actions did not make it clear to me what it actually means, or how it functions. Does the reticle show me the are in which my bullets land? If yes, then why am I missing when a zombies' head is literally at the end of my barrel? I know that range already has an impact on your ability to hit stuff, but how are 90% of my bullets missing, when there is literally no way it could happen? It is un-intuitive, and feels unfair. Especially when you just keep attracting more and more zombies, trying to get anything out of actually using a firearm. If the downside is that you attract attention, then the firearms should at least have some kind of value here. I had 0 experience with handguns, but after firing a few shots at a firing range after some basic safety instructions, I could still hit the target pretty well? And this is at a distance. If the target was up close, I don't see me missing a single shot. Sure, they might not all hit dead center still, but no way am I able to miss at point blank range.

Aiming in general felt terrible, try to aim the reticle at where the zombies are northeast from you, but you character aims southeast instead. The same goes for trying to consistently aim at a downed zombie. Surely, a static zombie on the ground would be an easy 1-tap when standing right above them with a handgun, but nope, I could not get my guy to aim down at the ground, but would either aim at the other zombies northeast, or aiming away southeast instead..

Secondly, melee combat feels worse?
In general, I felt that I had less consistent combat, with my "shoves" missing zombies, allowing them to get a free attack in, and we all know that getting hit even once here can be a death sentence, so I feel like this is super important to not feel unfair. Having a mid-fitness and high strength character, with no physical ailments, surely the hand-eye coordination would not warrant you shoving the air?

I also seemed to experience a lot of zombies being knocked down, and then their model would "flip" in a buggy-kinda way? I remember this happening in the previous build too, but not this frequently to be noticeable? Even so, it shouldn't happen in the first place.

And then there is muscle strain, which I see several posts on already. I understand the mechanic, and it makes sense that your character would feel some muscle strain over pro-longed stress. But we are talking about a couple of in-world minutes worth of activity, not an 8-hour workshift of physical exertion here. I have no idea how it works under the hood yet, but I really hope that the speed at which it accumulates is highly dependent on the ergonomics of the weapon/tool you are using. Does shooting a shotgun in this game give you muscle strain in the shoulder? Pretty sure that harder-hitting firearms should if it doesn't, but I need to play to that point before I can comment on it. Maybe if there was some pre-condition that does not actually hurt you stat-wise could make it less annoying of a mechanic. A state that your character stays in for a while, before prolonged exposure turns this state into something that actually hurts you. I think part of the issue with how it currently works, is that there is not 1 "skill" related to this effect, so most people will assume that either strength or fitness is the "generalized" factor for improving your character's tolerance, let' say. Naturally, we can't have too many "skills" to level, such as a "handling" skill, cause that is probably the most generic solution I can come up with. If you have experience in handling large objects like an axe or sledgehammer, and the ergonomic qualities of those tools are good, and their weight is manageable, along with what you are wearing, such as anti-slip gloves and what other factors you can think off, then sure, you should be able to comfortably continue to work with those conditions for quite a while before feeling any longer-term pain creeping up. You could argue, that IRL, if you did this in multiple hour-long sessions on a daily basis, your body would not be able to keep up forever, but that is where I argue that Zomboid is a video game, and you gotta draw the line between realism and fun somewhere sensible. As it stands, the current default implementation is way too punishing, and in general, when my first impression of seeing muscle strain is "wtf?", instead of "oh that's cool" - then maybe this needs a bit more adjusting.

Another note I made on my experience is the zombie magnet effect. I went to one of the larger houses on the southern side of Muldrough, a place I am very familiar with from the past version, so it made sense to use as a comparison. Just prior to this, I had a house activate an alarm much further away from this house, where I had walked around all the zombies that were congregating there. This is perfectly fine and what I expected. However, this lavish house had about ~2-4 zombies on the outside around it, and fenced in with high walls otherwise. I cleared the area around the house by pushing the zombies down and headstomping them, and did the same on the inside. I was sneaking around when outside, just for good meassure. After clearing the house and checking upstairs, I go down, and there wes a zombie that started banging on the window, so I figure I take it out. I realize that there was about ~3 zombies out in front of the house, not just one, so they must have wandered in. I figure that 3 is manageable, but then I run into the "shoving the air instead of the zombie" - problem, where I get scratched. My only weapon is a rolling pin and a little knife, so not the best. Furthermore, I also notice a zombie walking through the house, so there are 4 now. I decide to try and go around the house instead, but more zombies keep coming in, and I figure, this is probably the best time to use that handgun and ammo I mentioned before. maybe 2 shots in an entire mag hits at near point-blank range, and I keep trying to have the zombies close to hit them easier, but also push them back to give me time to aim. You can kinda guess that a ton of zombies came running due to the gunfire, which was expected. However, I also expected that a mag would be able to take out at least 3 zombies by the time it would take others to get there. I was wrong, confirming that firearm combat felt pretty much identical to the previous game version. I still tried to salvage it by trying to use up the rest of my ammo, but then I had the aforementioned aiming problems, and before I knew it, there were somewhere between 15-30 zombies there, making me think where the heck they all came from. I decided that I should vacate the area, and try to regroup in a safer spot, but I tried for so long to run a way, through a forest, just to try and shake off the zombies, but they kept finding me. I was unable to run, or literally do anything that could save me at this point, so I kinda just had to give up. In essence, it felt like the zombies always knew EXACTLY where I was. Amidst a ton of trees, with various zombies walking around the area trying to locate me? 1 finds me, and suddenly they all know where I am to get to me. And when I was inside the house, it felt very unbelievable that this many zombies would "randomly" find their way to the front entrance. Initial impression, is that you still have to 110% clear an area of zombies to avoid them homing in on your position, which does not feel good. Never been a big fan of this in the old version either. Even from a gameplay challenge perspective, it doesn't feel necessary? If the house is already empty, and I have to go to where the zombies are still roaming to get access to stuff I can use, then I will still have to deal with a zombie threat there. It feels kinda unfair that the game just sends zombies to your exact location, especially if you spent a long while carefully clearing out an area, cause you know that you are on some arbitrary time-clock before you get harassed by zombies for no particular reason. I would much rather have a sense of urgency in say, a highly populated building, where lingering too much could either attract actual nearby zombies through noise, or them wandering around randomly. This could all just be a huge coincidence though, so I will keep playing to see if I was just unlucky, but as it stands this is all pretty relatable to my experiences from the old version of the game.

Oh, and they really need to fix the larger fonts going out of bounds in the UI elements, as this is still a problem.

If prolonged experience with build 42 makes me change my mind, I wont deny if I was wrong in my initial impression, but so far, there are just a lot of signs pointing towards flaws that persist into this build, that should have been addressed.

[DragonKing]

I have now had the time to play some more, some ~5+ hours, and got a few more observations to point out, some of which are more general to the game, and not necessarily specific to B42. The points I made earlier still persists, with a few additions. So far, I am on my 4th life in the same playthrough, which has a couple frustrating reasons behind it, but I will get to some of them.

To start off, I am a bit unsure if the audio space has always accounted for your zoom level, and maybe it is just because it has been a while since I played last. My experience has been that the audio is very immersive from a pure sound design-perspective, but that it also makes no sense from a gameplay perspective, let me explain:

Any sounds in the game are perceived by the top-down character, and not... well... your character? - This means that zombies have a much easier time sneaking up on you when you are zoomed out in order to look farther out, which makes no sense to me. Your characters' hearing does not diminish because they are looking into the distance. This also means that getting bit or scratched in unfair ways are a bit more common now, and did in fact happen to me. I could not quite make out if this is the case, but if not, I would maybe suggest to keep gameplay-critical sounds such as zombie groans to not be dependent on your zoom level. Especially with the very dark environments, being able to rely on your hearing feels even more important now, and zooming affecting audio levels kinda makes your hearing more unpredictable.

Speaking of darkness, I absolutely enjoy it for the most part, but there are some situations that are kinda troublesome. For instance, walking up a set of stairs, only to find yourself in a pitch-black room. Since we currently still can't peek up or down stairs, we also don't know if we should prepare a flashlight. This has always been a problem in general, like not being able to see zombies shambling around on an upper floor, which we also have to worry about going downwards now. Going down is naturally not as big of a problem because you get too see the bottom floor as soon as you step onto the staircase. I hope this gets addressed. The new light switches with the little light on it are very clever, just a bit hard to see due to occlusion from some structural elements here and there, but not much you can do about it other than reposition them from a level design perspective. It does, however, make kinda sense, that you might have a harder time seeing a light switch behind a door for instance, or occluded by a bookshelf etc. I also was a bit surprised to see that I was unable to "read" in dark situations, but it makes perfect sense... mostly. It is a bit unclear to me when you are able to read, and when you are not, as the feedback you get, is just the lighting in the game (as far as I am aware). So I sat down in a grocery store, with my back against one of the fridge units, because the produce some light and I needed to rest. I figured I would look in my inventory, but noticed I was unable to read anything. Surely you would be able to read stuff in dim lighting? A bit later, I also realized I was unable to open my map while outside in an unlit area, which made me think if this should always be the case? If the moon is out, you might still be able to read stuff, just poorly - not a complaint, just an observation. I am a bit worried for when the power goes out though, as light seems way more crucial now, which is really cool. I did find a generator, but the gas station is swarming with zombies, and I also still need to find a manual. I am a bit unsure if lighting affects your reading speed though. I have fast reader, and reading any exp books takes foreeeeeever - I usually prefer reading to be much faster for skill books, since you will end up wasting so much IRL time on it, which is something that has always bothered me about the books in general. Even speeding up time, it is still really slow. I get that it is not super believable to read a book within an in-game hour, but I would much rather be able to get back to the fun parts of the game instead.

The zombie infection mechanics still just suck though - from a pure gameplay perspective. I have never been a fan of the "dice roll "maybe" death" mechanic that it is at its core, and I know more casual players who play without infection at all for this very reason. But I think that is such a shame, so I propose that we maybe get some more options to make it less punishing to play with infection enabled. We currently have the setting where being attacked from behind, increases the likelihood of it being a bite. But a bite is still a 100% death-sentence, so as far as what is in the game right now, your only options are only: "dice-roll death" or "no dice-roll death". In this playthrough, I have only sustained a handful of zombie-related injuries so far, and every time that I got injured by a singular zombie that snuck up on me, it turned out I was infected.

I got scratched by a prone zombie during a fight with 2 that were laying on the ground, but instead of hitting the one crawling towards me, my character was hitting the one they were standing on, so the crawling zombie got a free scratch (unfair) that turned out to be lethal. Another time, was the aforementioned "looking-far" situation, where I could not hear the zombie approaching from behind me. I was outside, standing in an unlit area, trying to look for where I should be going. I think I was standing on grass, and zombies don't really have foot-step sounds, but even if they did, I guess I would only have been able to hear their groans. Regardless, singular scratch injury, which turned out to be lethal. The first death I had was related to me getting over-exhausted, and unable outpace the horde chasing me, so that one was related to gun aiming not working well, which is unrelated. However, the vast majority of my deaths in Zomboid to death have been due to really dumb reasons, or a dice roll, which just feels bad and unfair? - It makes my not want to get invested in my character at all, and makes me want to mod out the reading of books. I ended up using the skill journal in B41 as a must-have, but that doesn't really suit the vanilla experience.

So I propose maybe adding some settings to make zombie infection a bit more predictable for casual players? - I was thinking it could be neat with a setting, where the first injury sustained from a zombie will NEVER be a bite, and extend this to an additional setting where the first scratch from a zombie can NEVER infect you. This would do a couple of things:

1. Players wont have to guess if they got infected from a single zombie injury
2. Infection wont be removed from the game, and is still a very real threat. If you over-extend your luck, you are asking to get infected, so more risk/reward, without being too punishing.
3. First aid as a skill becomes more relevant.
4. Unpredictable, unfair situations in the game become less frustrating.
5. It eases up the learning curve.
6. You are more prone to get invested in your character, knowing that you can still save your run if you recover.
7. Rear attacks are still more dangerous than others, as repeated attacks will still put you at higher risk of a death-sentence bite.

Is this a very "game-y" kind of mechanic? Yes, but I think it would make the game more approachable to new and casual players. It would also mean that these settings could be enabled in the "standard" experience, and not completely remove the zombie infection. Groups of zombies are also still just as dangerous too, cause if you get attacked by 2 zombies within short time span of each other, the rng-part of the infection could still get you.

In regards to the new interior and exterior designs, they are sooo good, it feels much more unique and lived in now when you explore buildings. As a recurring player, being able to still find my way around Muldrough is also a big +. However, this also means that buildings are a lot more cramped now, which does not have to be a bad thing - but there are some things I would like to be tweaked. For instance, why can't we squeeze past chairs to get to otherwise blocked-off furniture? It seems a bit inconsistent at the moment, where in some cases, you can completely walk through some objects, while others completely block movement. Most of this is an old issue, but with B42, the limitations with the old collision system is more apparent. For instance, there are houses where the furniture completely block your access to the windows, making you unable to cover them up, or even close/open the curtains placed there. This also creates situations where you think you can reach some curtains, but you find your character auto-pathing outside, because they can only access them from there. So in short, making these more cramped spaces more navigable feels quite important, and you could re-design everything to not have any blocked-off spaces, but I think making us able to squeeze past more furniture that gets placed in the middle of rooms, such as chairs, would be a better solution. I did also run into the old issue of inconsistency with the targeting system in regards to the new buildings. I realized, that the reason why I had a hard time to consistently sit in chairs and on beds etc. (which is a very nice feature), was because I did not account for the isometric cursor, as far as I can tell anyway. So instead of aiming with the mouse when wanting to sit, you have to aim at a normally invisible offset, that you can only see when aiming, which is not super intuitive. I know this is an inconsistency that has existed for a while now, but with the sitting/resting mechanic, it just emphasizes that this is still a problem.

I am still struggling when it comes to defending myself though, especially finding decent implements to use as weapons. I did find a baseball bat in a house, but it has since broken - did like the detail of it turning into a "broken bat" before completely breaking, but I have still to look into the crafting system to find out if I can restore it, or it is a lost cause now. From what I have tried to do with the new crafting system however, my primary response is that it is... confusing? I found a couple boxes with some wooden handles and whatnot, along with a box of nails and screws, I also have twine and a bunch of basic tools like a clawhammer, scissors, saw, chisel, knife, duct tape, planks... but I don't seem able to really craft anything super useful? I have the carving trait, but it only seems like I can really make handles for things, and other sub-components, but it is super unclear to me if I can make any end-products that I can use to defend myself with. I think the idea that you need a lot more specialized tools to make specific things in sensible ways is cool, but I look at some of these crafting menu recipes for weapons, and it seems kinda overwhelming? So I guess it is mainly a problem of not really know what I should be aiming to try and make, and what I need to look out for in order to so, because there is not just so many things now, but also a lot of contextually similar items. I figured I would try to make a basic spear, but I need a "very long stick", but a "wooden rod" and "long handle" is not the same or usable somehow, which contextually seems odd to me. And I can see that I can carve all these handles, but have no idea what they are used for, without looking through all the recipes until I stumble into something that needs them. Also a bit confusing, is which items are made with "carpentry", and which are made with "carving", as they not just sound very similar, but also both deal with wood-stuff.

Is it really necessary to have multiple renditions of a "long stick" and a "short stick"? Just as an example. The more sub-components you add into the game, the harder it is going to be for a player to understand what their specific use-case is, and also, trying to make sense of multiple-use-case items. I know the crafting system is still very W.I.P., but I felt like I still had to comment on these initial impressions, cause it signals that the crafting system is seemingly going to get very complicated and cumbersome to use/figure out. I don't mind complexity, but maybe we could use a "what is this item used for" feature present in mods from B41. I also think, that a more clear separation between simple and complex items could be useful, Maybe also separating stuff like weapons into sub-categories such as makeshift, bone-crafted, wood-crafting, metal-crafting (some-such) could help narrow down what you might actually be able to make out of stuff from the place your are exploring. I mean, bone-crafted stuff doesn't really help/concern me, if I am scavenging stuff from houses and such, so it just makes it hard to find level 1 weapons I can actually make. I also feel like there should be more level 0 things you can craft, as I have always found the "getting started" on any skill to be the most annoying to find out in B41 even, so having more options would be nice. (I did figure out how to make a simple spear, but it seems a little excessive and specific, haven't even found any of the tools you could use such as a broom or rake even). My fear is that a spear will be just as awful as in B41 though, as in general, durability seems to be unbelievably poor for most items when you start out.

And I guess this also goes back to my reading books issue combined with getting infected. With all these new ultra-specific crafting skills, there are even more books to read, which is a huge time-sink into something that the reward is to save time and effort. Crafting currently looks like something that is only really useful if you either have the skills from the start, or for really long-term super end-game characters. So consider that a single scratch can take all that progress away due to a dice roll, does not exactly read as "fun" to me. Again, yes, you can turn infection off, but if the default settings for the game provides an experience that makes you frustrated, or even rage-quit, then I would argue that it could do with some adjusting. If you don't mind RNG death, you could always just enable it in your settings, or it could even be the default for more difficult default settings. I am just saying that for the new or casual player, maybe tone down on the hardcore-mode experience a bit - as most adult people can't dedicate hundreds of hours on a single game,

I will play around a bit more, see if I can actually get somewhere, and get a better idea on what you can do to maybe survive a bit easier. Maybe I can actually get my skills up to a point where they are actually useful.

Regarding the "homing" zombies experience, I think that might just have been bad coincidence and luck. When I returned to the same place, I was a bit confused, because all the zombies were... gone. Not sure where they wandered off to, but I was able to explore rather freely around the area with a rational amount of zombies around. The helicopter event kinda messed up a bunch of my progress, by re-introducing zombies into a lot of the areas I had previously cleared, but I don't really mind random events like that, as long as dealing with the consequences of the event doesn't completely negate all progress you were trying to make.

[Neskess]

>played 60 minutes
Stopped reading there also tldr

[Zushen]

With the muscle strain system, I actually tend to use pain killers now rather than hoarding hundreds of them for no reason.

I haven't personally tried shooting yet so far and I've been playing the unstable for like 25 hours so far? Something like that. But so far in my playtime, I haven't had a single 'shove' miss the zombie. I haven't even been scratched or lost any blood on my character yet. So far at 381 kills and on day 26. Much less kills than I used to get but I think the new muscle strain systems makes you pace yourself a lot better. (Or just pop pain meds but becareful to not overdose)

As for zombie 'magnet effect'. I find the new sound overhaul with the way zombies interact with it to be making it seem like this. I was clearing out some of the storage units and hitting my axe against the metal door to break it lured the zombies from quite a far ways away. Ones that didn't attract from simply driving around the storage units or even clearing the area initially. We are in the unstable branch though and I am sure this will be fine-tuned later on.

Edit: For missing shoves, maybe go into your settings and re-enable the outlines on zombies for melee attacks? They do help, specially when trying to/not to target crawling zeds in a group of them.

[DragonKing]

Originally posted by Zushen:

With the muscle strain system, I actually tend to use pain killers now rather than hoarding hundreds of them for no reason.

I haven't personally tried shooting yet so far and I've been playing the unstable for like 25 hours so far? Something like that. But so far in my playtime, I haven't had a single 'shove' miss the zombie. I haven't even been scratched or lost any blood on my character yet. So far at 381 kills and on day 26. Much less kills than I used to get but I think the new muscle strain systems makes you pace yourself a lot better. (Or just pop pain meds but becareful to not overdose)

As for zombie 'magnet effect'. I find the new sound overhaul with the way zombies interact with it to be making it seem like this. I was clearing out some of the storage units and hitting my axe against the metal door to break it lured the zombies from quite a far ways away. Ones that didn't attract from simply driving around the storage units or even clearing the area initially. We are in the unstable branch though and I am sure this will be fine-tuned later on.

I also find myself using pain killers a lot more, as my character seems to be in constant agony when I am out and about /j - But really, your character does seem to feel pain to an almost unbelievable degree, but maybe that is just because the "pain" they experience is something you wouldn't even comment on normally, the game just has to tell us, cause well... we can't feel it.

As far as the shooting goes, I figured that since they gave us a gun from the very moment we spawn to test it, what better time to test than right at the start of the game. If it doesn't feel right when dealing with a low-pop amount of zombies in a less risky environment, then using it anywhere else in the game would feel a lot worse. Since I also see other people commenting that they just "ditch the gun", because it feels useless, that really says something about how people dislike it, and I find myself doing the same.

I don't think I was causing any sounds that should have attracted zombies. They just kinda gathered up in front of the house, so I attribute it to being like in A41 where they wander in from nearby areas to repopulate when you clear out "too many" zombies. Never been a fan of that mechanic, as it means you can't clear out an area to feel safe there, until you clear out the entire city. Alternatively, you can of course lure zombies away in hordes, but at least in B41, they would wander back in to re-populate, unless you lured them really far away into zones that would get unloaded when you leave.

In my B41 experience, you can end up clearing out an entire city by just dealing with zombies wandering towards you, with you staying in the same place. So when you go out to explore the rest of the town, it is almost devoid of zombies entirely, which removes much of the challenge in getting to, and exploring unlooted building.

I did stay on my zombified character for quite a while, while doing other stuff on my pc, and I seemed to notice that he would walk around semi-randomly? A bit like the wandering zombies mod for B41, but idk how zombie movements work in B42 on a technical level.... yet.

[DragonKing]

Originally posted by Zushen:

Edit: For missing shoves, maybe go into your settings and re-enable the outlines on zombies for melee attacks? They do help, specially when trying to/not to target crawling zeds in a group of them.

Back after holiday :p

I am aware of this feature in the game, but I really don't like the visual. It is too... in your face, and makes the game less immersive to me.

before I went on vacation, I had started a new run due to the hotfix regarding chickens and otherwise, and I noticed a few differences. Regarding this though, I did enable multi-hit, which may have an influence on your shove interaction? I am unsure. I did have 1 instance of a shove "missing", because I was just a little off on my angle, and they were moving weirdly after being staggered.

In general, the window of opportunity for hitting zombies in certain cases is too narrow, such as when they climb over a fence. If you attack too early, even though they visually have hit the ground, you wont be stomping them, but attacking the air, and then you have to pray you can either move away, or hit on a second attack instead. Less a problem with multi hit enabled, but timing is super crucial if you are dealing with multiple zombies otherwise.

If you attack just a bit too late, you will get lunged at, knocking you off balance, and with the timing of it all, you could be in grave danger from that if there are multiple zombies present.

I generally also prefer using longer weapons, like crowbars, for this exact reason. In most cases, you can do an emergency shove if you melee attack misses due to being out of range, but that doesn't work so well if multi-hit is not enabled.

I understand that multi-hit used to be enabled by default, but don't really understand why that is no longer the case. Especially with muscle strain, having multi-hit enabled makes the game more enjoyable.

Speaking of, after that hotfix, it seems like the moodle for pain did not show up, even though my hands were in slight pain, so I guess the threshold for "hurting" from muscle strain, or the conditions had changed. I only had a few instances of actually getting a pain moodle, which seemed pretty appropriate. But that could also be a side-effect from having multi-hit enabled, idk. At any rate, the new save has gone really well, much closer to what I usually experience with the game. I was thinking about doing an outline of the exact settings I changed, which were not a lot, but makes singleplayer a lot more enjoyable to me.

[Nordil(Hun)]

TL:DR